tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41214984490060319182024-03-13T12:08:26.772-06:00Shades of IthilienChristy Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09912738496371937763noreply@blogger.comBlogger43125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-8225624528709545152015-01-13T11:40:00.001-07:002015-03-03T16:02:28.614-07:00Urban Ministry in Minas Tirith: Lessons from J.R.R. Tolkien for Christian Community Development<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZIaSOBj_ok3VbR8ZcJcskv7HH4lDamNjH0OQH81d0ItSOlWHYukdsoeLbpdxTU1iUKzvtAaX31YoMsHxFGhkDuH889IegZ1mIOK5ntaE8NOn1HgfxdCZ4Pha1cqR9cRmRDADk78dOksu5/s1600/Urban+Ministry+in+Minas+Tirith-.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZIaSOBj_ok3VbR8ZcJcskv7HH4lDamNjH0OQH81d0ItSOlWHYukdsoeLbpdxTU1iUKzvtAaX31YoMsHxFGhkDuH889IegZ1mIOK5ntaE8NOn1HgfxdCZ4Pha1cqR9cRmRDADk78dOksu5/s1600/Urban+Ministry+in+Minas+Tirith-.png" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.mythgard.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/MythmootIIIBanner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.mythgard.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/MythmootIIIBanner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><br /></a><a href="http://www.mythgard.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/MythmootIIIBanner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><br /></a>This weekend I attended <a href="http://www.mythgard.org/activities/mythmoot/">Mythmoot III: Ever On</a>, a Tolkien and fantasy literature conference hosted in Baltimore by the <a href="http://www.mythgard.org/">Mythgard Institute</a>, whose President, Corey Olsen, is known online as the <a href="http://www.tolkienprofessor.com/wp/">Tolkien Professor</a>. I have attended this conference every year since the inaugural conference in 2012. Each year, it has been an energizing experience: joining a hundred other Tolkien nerds to discuss a vast array of topics, from Middle-Earth to Doctor Who to Irish Gaelic. It’s a joy to let our nerd flags fly high and share our love and enthusiasm for these topics.</div>
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<a href="http://www.mythgard.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/MythmootIIIBanner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><img alt="Mythmoot III Banner" border="0" src="http://www.mythgard.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/MythmootIIIBanner.jpg" height="145" width="320" /></a>One of the other striking aspects of this conference is
the diversity of its attendees in terms of what they do in their “day
jobs.” While the usual suspects –
full-time academics and professors, aspiring writers, artists and musicians,
etc. – abounded, these were by no means the only professions present. Computer scientists, physicists, retail
workers, marketing reps, and so on were also represented. As were Latin American studies majors turned
non-profit community development workers, ever divided between the two
competing passions of literary nerdom and human rights promotion – that is to
say, there was room for me too. No
matter how disparate our professions and backgrounds, we all found something
inspiring and compelling in these works of fiction, and joined our different
perspectives to form a more complex and compelling discourse.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So when John asked me to write a reflection on Tolkien
and what we do at ECM, it seemed only natural that I could draw some connections. Here, then, are some lessons from Tolkien for
Christian community development.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]-->1.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]--><b><i>Yet such is oft the course of deeds that
move the wheels of the world: small hands must do them because they must, while
the eyes of the great are elsewhere. </i></b>Peter
Jackson’s film version expresses this same sentiment, “Even the smallest person
can change the course of the future.” When
it comes to the great work of bearing God’s light to the dark corners of our
fallen world, nobody – not rustic, naïve hobbits, nor poor undocumented
immigrants – is irrelevant. Everyone, no
matter how marginalized or forgotten, has something to offer, and we must never
fall into the trap of trying to judge whose contributions are valuable and
whose are not.<br />
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<!--[if !supportLists]-->2.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]--><b><i>I will not say, do not weep, for not all
tears are an evil.</i></b> A few months
ago, Morgan wrote a <a href="http://www.eastcentralministries.org/uploads/PressRelease/08dbc5af829b4feb9f4675aaeaa645e3/Fall_2014_Newsletter.pdf">reflection
on the role of lament</a> in ministry.
Seeing the pain and the need around us, allowing our hearts to break,
and sharing that pain with others, does not mean that we despair or lose
hope. Tears of lament are not an evil,
for they attest to our shared humanity with others, and the image of God that
we all bear.<br />
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<!--[if !supportLists]-->3.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]--><b><i>Blessed are the legend</i></b>-<b><i>makers…
It is not they that have forgot the night.
</i></b>While fantasy literature and speculative fiction are often
derogatorily dismissed as “escapist,” implying their lack of engagement with
the real world, Tolkien believed that the escape offered by fantasy in fact
offers readers a better means of approaching reality, not by denying its
struggles, but by renewing readers’ appreciation for its beauties. Community development workers, then, should
not dismiss or reject the arts and creativity as a distraction from the “real
work,” but rather embrace them as God-given gifts to strengthen us in this
journey and build community with one another.<br />
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<!--[if !supportLists]-->4.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]--><b><i>All we have to decide is what to do with the
time that is given us</i></b>. It is easy
to become discouraged when we see the enormity of the evils we face. Be it the looming conquest by Sauron and the
forces of evil, or the seemingly irrevocable creep of generational and
institutional poverty, we often despair of ever being able to make a difference,
and we fall back on questions of Why this?
Why now? Why me? But Gandalf reminds Frodo, and us, that those
questions are, as they say, above our pay grade. We may never know how to solve these
problems, but we can still choose to act on the talents and opportunities we
have received.<br />
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<!--[if !supportLists]-->5.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]--><b><i>It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door ...</i></b> <b><i>You step into the road, and if
you do not keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you may be swept off to. </i></b>Ministry, like any endeavor to which
God calls us, is an adventure – a dangerous business, one might say. When you choose to say “yes” to God, be
prepared for him to take you down unexpected paths.<br />
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<!--[if !supportLists]-->6.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]--><b><i>It is true that if these hobbits understood
the danger, they would not dare to go.
But … in this matter it would be well to trust rather to their
friendship than to great wisdom</i></b>.
The work of community development is, without doubt, difficult and
intimidating. It will require patience
and endurance, the hope to keep fighting even when the same needs continue to
be felt, the humility to admit that we don’t know everything, and that
sometimes we fail. This line of work has
never made anyone rich, and probably according to many, it is not a “wise”
career choice. But it is a choice born
from loyalty and love, and it is the bonds of friendship that we forge in this
journey that will see us through.<o:p></o:p></div>
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While there are surely more connections that could be
drawn, these stand out to me at present.
Tolkien affirms throughout his creative and analytical works the
capacity for heroism in all people; the idea that heroism is a choice to act
courageously, rather than the possession of great strength or knowledge; the
redemptive and revitalizing power of creativity; and the necessity of community
and empathy. These values are essential
to the work of community development, and by engaging with fairy stories like <i>The Lord of the Rings </i>we come to
understand these values on a deeper level, and renew our appreciation of the
good for which we are fighting.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Namárië, tenn’
enquetielva.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
Christy Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09912738496371937763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-44409808817573345892014-12-19T09:15:00.000-07:002014-12-19T09:15:02.169-07:00Confessions of a baby grant writer<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I started working with ECM at the beginning of November,
and these past two months have been full of activity and new experiences.
The primary focus of my position is grant writing, and before coming to
ECM, I had only ever written one other grant (during my Nicaragua internship in
the summer of 2013). So I feel like I'm learning a lot of this as I go,
in terms of figuring out what goes into writing a grant proposal, how to
approach foundations, etc. I have to
admit there are times when I feel insecure and unqualified. But then, there are times when I feel like I
am growing and learning and finding a groove.<o:p></o:p></div>
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On the other hand, I feel like this position uses a lot
of my skills, and that my past experiences have prepared me for it. I
like writing and feel that I'm pretty good at it, so this is just learning to
write in a new way. My internship in Nicaragua introduced me to
grassroots community development work and the importance of actively
maintaining a community-driven perspective. I love being able to speak
Spanish with my coworkers and community members, and continue refining my
conversation skills and learning new words.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Throughout this learning process, I’m discovering some of
the interesting aspects of being a grant writer. First, I get to have kind of an overhead view
of the organization and its programs. I
get to see what everyone is doing, hear everyone’s vision for where they’re
going, and help them dream and scheme about how to get there. And I love that.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The other side of that coin, though, is that my
particular tasks aren’t very interesting to tell about. I mostly sit at a computer all day, writing
and editing proposals, researching foundations and grant opportunities,
updating my spreadsheets of information, meeting with program staff to learn
their vision and priorities, etc. I like
writing, and I like using language in different ways to communicate what we're doing. But the
program staff – Lidia, the Clinic Director, or Morgan, the Urban Farm Manager,
or John, the Executive Director – are the ones with their hands directly in ECM’s
projects.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The other odd aspect of this job is the constant waiting
that it seems like it will entail. We
submitted a short proposal to a family foundation last week, and that felt like
an accomplishment. I’d been writing and
revising the draft, and meeting with Lidia and John, for about a month, so it
was gratifying to check it off my list.
But we won’t hear from them until February, so it will weeks before we
know if they will approve it or not. And
based on the research I’ve done, a two month response time seems relatively
quick.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I love being here at ECM and getting to be a part of
their work. Since my job isn’t too
noteworthy on a day-to-day basis, in the coming weeks I’d like to tell you all
a bit about ECM’s different programs.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I hope you are all having a wonderful holiday season (for
those who celebrate, whatever you celebrate), and thanks for reading!<o:p></o:p></div>
Christy Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09912738496371937763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-41072803093026067812014-12-12T15:24:00.000-07:002014-12-12T15:25:42.145-07:00New opportunities, new adventures<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Hello again,
Internet!<o:p></o:p></div>
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It’s been a
while, and I never told you about the end of my internship in Nicaragua, for
which I apologize. Since my last post, I
concluded my internship with FSD, finished grad school, and moved back to my
beloved hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’m back,
and resurrecting this blog to tell you about two new exciting developments.<o:p></o:p></div>
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First, after
several months of job searching, at the beginning of November, I began working
with an organization called East Central Ministries. ECM is a faith-based community development
organization located in the International District of Albuquerque. The organization serves a low-income,
predominantly Hispanic/Spanish-speaking population, and focuses on partnering
with the community to develop sustainable and creative solutions to their needs. I love ECM’s approach to ministry, in that
they invite the community members to become agents of change in the process of
neighborhood revitalization, and the community members are the ones who define
their greatest needs and goals. ECM
carries out its mission through a variety of projects, including a low-cost
health clinic, a community food co-op, an urban farm social enterprise, an
affordable housing community, and youth programs.<o:p></o:p></div>
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My role at
ECM primarily focuses on grant writing (beginning with the clinic), and may
extend to include other communications and volunteer coordination tasks. This position is a really good fit for me, my
skills, and my interests, because I get to write, use my Spanish, and work
promoting human rights in the city that I love.
It’s a joy going into work every day, and I’m so excited that this gets
to be my first post-school job.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Thus far in
these two months, I have<o:p></o:p></div>
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<ul>
<li>Read through dozens of old documents and grant
applications to get my bearings</li>
<li>Assembled a database of around 80 grant
opportunities we can consider applying to</li>
<li>Written and submitted two proposals</li>
<li>Interviewed the clinic staff to understand their
roles and perspectives</li>
<li>Written new content for the website based on
those interviews to better express the current operations of the clinic</li>
</ul>
<o:p></o:p></div>
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If you’d
like to learn more about ECM, you can visit their website at <a href="http://www.eastcentralministries.org/">www.eastcentralministries.org</a>. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The other update
I’d like to share is a trip I am taking with a group from my church, Sandia
Presbyterian. We will be travelling to
Guatemala this January with Living Water International to help dig a well and conduct
hygiene classes in a rural community outside of Antigua.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’m excited
about this trip because it will be an opportunity to build relationships of
service and compassion across cultures, and to see more of the diversity of the
Body of Christ. I like Living Water’s
model because they have a team permanently stationed in the communities where
they work to ensure the long term sustainability of the well projects, and
because they involve local community members on their team and in the coordination
of their projects. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I’m actually
currently fundraising (until December 18) for this trip, so if you’d like to
donate, you can do so <a href="https://www.water.cc/christina-sobolik/give-well">here</a>. Anything you can give would be much
appreciated. Prayers and encouragement
are also much appreciated!<o:p></o:p></div>
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Anyway, I
will be sure to give an update on the Guatemala trip, and I hope to be giving
some updates on my work with ECM in the coming months.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As always,
thanks for reading, and take care!<o:p></o:p></div>
Christy Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09912738496371937763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-80066110894547823272013-08-04T18:07:00.000-06:002013-08-04T18:07:04.819-06:00Nicaragua: Bisutería y Repostería<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Hello, all! I hope
you are having a happy weekend. Here
follows the promised update about the jewelry and pastry workshops.</div>
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The Jewelry Workshop was Friday, July 26. It took place in the Casa Materna in Nancimí,
since most of the participants were from Nancimí. The Casa Materna was a past project carried
out in partnership with FSD. Many of the
rural communities surrounding Nancimí lack medical clinics, so pregnant women
would travel by foot to Nancimí in order to give birth. Unfortunately, as a result, many women went
into labor en route to Nancimí, resulting in serious health hazards, even
sometimes mortality, for the baby and the mother. The Casa Materna was built to give women a
place where they could go two weeks before their due date, so that when they
gave birth, they would be in a comfortable bed under medical care.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirLVp05jOCsUsKwraOuwHZMxHOmA35NwY-Tb9_TLPQqZV3-DArN_66J3K834kbVAz0NZCKOGOXmpfBx3aEhK7Yd4cnMgtnVKgUJtGik_WNEs6f7l2b3rPiNWs3xORsj2YfGhap6eMOiTHl/s1600/nicaragua,+talleres+001.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirLVp05jOCsUsKwraOuwHZMxHOmA35NwY-Tb9_TLPQqZV3-DArN_66J3K834kbVAz0NZCKOGOXmpfBx3aEhK7Yd4cnMgtnVKgUJtGik_WNEs6f7l2b3rPiNWs3xORsj2YfGhap6eMOiTHl/s1600/nicaragua,+talleres+001.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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The Casa Materna in Nancimí.</div>
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The view from the Casa Materna--beautiful.</div>
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The workshop was facilitated by Yessenia, one of the <i>promotoras</i> who lives in Nancimí. She volunteered to go down to Las Salinas,
learn how to make the jewelry from a fellow FSD intern, and then teach the
workshop. She taught them a couple
bracelet patterns, how to use the pliers, and how to make earrings.<br />
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Yessenia, in the red shirt, showing my host sisters how to make the bracelets.</div>
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During the workshop, each of the participants made a
bracelet and a pair of earrings. That
day, what they made was theirs to do with as they would—keep it, sell it, give
it as a gift (one of the women actually gave me a bracelet she made with some
extra beads, which put a huge smile on my face). But and the end of the workshop, they chose a
day to meet again (the following Tuesday), and that day I would provide them
with their “starter kits”—little packets of beads, thread, pliers, etc., so
they would have the starting capital to start selling and making a profit.</div>
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This workshop and the subsequent “production day” were
such heartwarming experiences for me. During
the workshop, I loved seeing how excited the participants were to learn the
patterns, and the enthusiasm with which they showed me what they made and let me to take their picture. They took such
evident pride in creating something beautiful, which they could then use to
supplement their household income.
During the production day, when each participant had more materials to
work with, they started getting creative and trying new designs. And then afterwards, when we were returning
the chairs we had borrowed from the health clinic, I saw a couple of the
participants already starting to sell their wares to women waiting for their
appointments at the clinic. All three
members of my host family attended as well.
Valeria already sold two bracelets and a pair of earrings to her fellow
students in her Saturday English class, and received a couple commissions for
bracelets of a specific color. Araceli
took the other two bracelets to work with her today to find clients there. It is so beautiful for me to see the women
exercising their creativity and their entrepreneurship, and to know that these
workshops have already made a difference in income of at least a few of them.</div>
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The Pastry Workshop was last Friday, August 2, in the
Soda y Repostería Jenna here in Tola. It
was facilitated by Doña Socorro, one of the women who works there. The participants learned three different
recipes: donuts, turnover-style pastries (using two different fillings, one
pineapple and one chicken and potato), and “cheese fingers”, or strips of
cheese wrapped in pastry dough, fried, then rolled in sugar. Needless to say, I was very hungry by the
time the workshop was over, and immensely enjoyed sampling the participants’ creations,
and I can personally attest to how delicious they were.</div>
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It was also really lovely to see how the women all worked
together during this workshop. When Doña
Socorro demonstrated a technique, they would all gather around to watch, then
switch off so that everyone could practice it.
As the recipes progressed, they wordlessly divided up the tasks between
each other, each one jumping in where something needed doing. </div>
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Doña Socorro, in the center, mixing ingredients for donuts and explaining the recipe, while the participants take notes.</div>
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Doña Socorro demonstrating how to knead the donut dough.</div>
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My host mom's sister-in-law (I guess that also makes her my host aunt) rolling out the donut dough.</div>
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Participants removing the donuts that have been cut from the rolled dough.</div>
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Doña Socorro deomnstrating how to wrap the cheese in pastry dough for the <i>dedos de queso</i>.</div>
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Doña Socorro explaining how to know when the donuts are ready to remove from the oil.</div>
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Pastries frying, chicken-potato pastries in one pot, pineapple in the other.</div>
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Finished donuts, rolled in sugar. Yum.</div>
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<o:p>Finished <i>dedos de queso</i>. Yum, again.</o:p></div>
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They have scheduled their production day for this coming
Saturday, August 10, and Doña Socorro has very kindly allowed them to use the
kitchen at the Soda again. So that day,
I will bring them another round of ingredients, they will practice the
techniques they learned during the workshop, and then start selling their
products.</div>
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In sum, I think the skills workshops went very well, and
I cherished the opportunity to be present.
I want to be sure to thank all my donors once again. Your generosity has already helped empower
these women to find new ways of self expression and new ways of building
economic stability. </div>
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As of tomorrow, I only have 2 weeks left in
Nicaragua. Those two weeks will be quite
full, with two more workshops, the pastry production day, a final report to
complete, and some translations I need to finish up. But my, the time has flown. There are definitely some things I miss about
home, but I have developed so much affection for my host family and host
community, and it’s starting to hit me that I don’t have much time left here. So I’m trying to take advantage of the time I
do have left to savor the beautiful relationships, nature, and culture (and
fruit! I am going to dream about the
mangoes here for the rest of my life) of this community.</div>
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I hope you have all had restful weekends, and I look
forward to updating you soon!</div>
Christy Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09912738496371937763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-18394903305884951892013-07-31T18:18:00.001-06:002013-07-31T18:18:22.103-06:00Nicaragua: El Taller de Emprendimiento<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Hello, internet, and happy Wednesday! My apologies for the delay in updating. Between organizing workshops, going on
retreat, and the cold I had last week, I’ve been a bit busy. But I definitely want to tell you all about
how the project has been going. So,
then, ¡adelante!</div>
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The first workshop in the Entrepreneurship Workshop was
last Wednesday, he 24<sup>th</sup>.
Overall, I think it went really well.
The women really seemed to enjoy it, and they all participated in the
activities and discussions. Unfortunately, though rather unsurprisingly,
the workshop was too short to be able to go as in-depth as the participants
would have liked. The curriculum used
for this event was adapted from a 9-week-long course on small business plans,
so I can’t say I’m that surprised that there wasn’t time to fit all the
information in. The good news is,
though, that tanks to the generosity of those of you who donated to the
project, we have enough funds to plan a second session of the workshop, which
will take place on August 13. So once
again, I am so grateful for your generosity, and that it has given us the
flexibility to adjust the project to meet the needs of the participants.</div>
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Given the abbreviated nature of the content, last week’s
workshop endedu p focusing mostly on self-evaluation, cultivating an
entrepreneurial attitude, and being creative in identifying business
opportunities. The morning started with
a quick name game as an icebreaker. They
then did an acrostic activity in which, for each letter of their name, they identified a
personal strength that they possessed.
Next was a similar activity called “¿Quién soy yo?”, or “Who am I?”,
where they wrote a short paragraph describing themselves, what they do, what
skills they have, what they are good at, what their personal goals and dreams
are, etc. A few of them then shared what
they had written. I think this exercise
was really great because, as I have mentioned, a lot of the women and teen
girls participating in the workshop have experienced physical or psychological
abuse. So I think having an activity in
which they thought about what they are good at, and how they can use those
skills to create things and start projects and help their families was really
good for boosting their self-esteem and self-confidence.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEwqJskXg8AtBzqovA4jKU3EoRsiL2MjaWWPXNtn1fzDEOpyQQoSQo7Kp7lQJwPWYwO0AFtdDDxpkJea_cVA3tWp0Mf5N_1urpQ4blGvHcAJRv23_pwOkFPZTCfYmqSwyW0XeqONMB90D2/s1600/Nicaragua+130.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEwqJskXg8AtBzqovA4jKU3EoRsiL2MjaWWPXNtn1fzDEOpyQQoSQo7Kp7lQJwPWYwO0AFtdDDxpkJea_cVA3tWp0Mf5N_1urpQ4blGvHcAJRv23_pwOkFPZTCfYmqSwyW0XeqONMB90D2/s1600/Nicaragua+130.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Some of the participants filling out the acrostic activity.</div>
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Filling out the "¿Quién soy yo?" excercise.</div>
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Anyeri, my host mom's sister (does that make her my host aunt?) sharing her "¿Quién soy yo?" paragraph</div>
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Martita, the Director of Casa de la Mujer, then talked a
bit about entrepreneurial attitudes, or the kinds of character traits and
personal habits it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. The traits were the following: 1) have
self-confidence; 2) search for and take advantage of opportunities; 3) search
for information; 4) create support networks; 5) set goals and objectives; 6)
assume moderate risk; 7) plan and control systematically; 8) fulfill the work
that has been contracted; 9) be persistent; and 10) demand efficiency and
quality.</div>
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The list of entrepreneurial qualities.</div>
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After lunch, they did a brainstorming activity to spur
creativity in thinking of business ideas.
They broke into groups, and each group received a collage of magazine
photos. They each had to think up as
many business ideas as they could that had to do with those images. The point of the exercise was to think
outside the box. A photo of a fruit
drink, for example, doesn’t just suggest a restaurant or a bar. It also suggests the artisan who made the
glass, the farmer who grew the fruit, the travel agent who books vacations, and
so on.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUI1WivI9UGdqDiw4zzWGesthvhLuzKNJQGsslNKKe7X1uQNYcFlI6bHQSFbTh1jHcDS9jH12-RWXtFggsU3VgzXF_8NW9lkhyphenhyphenillOLpQvOOcFwXq_ImCrEc2jGW7bGNZjrZjXxv5yptC7/s1600/Nicaragua+141.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUI1WivI9UGdqDiw4zzWGesthvhLuzKNJQGsslNKKe7X1uQNYcFlI6bHQSFbTh1jHcDS9jH12-RWXtFggsU3VgzXF_8NW9lkhyphenhyphenillOLpQvOOcFwXq_ImCrEc2jGW7bGNZjrZjXxv5yptC7/s1600/Nicaragua+141.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Working on the collage activity.</div>
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A couple of the groups working on the collage activity.</div>
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Some of the participants sharing the business ideas they came up with.</div>
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<o:p> </o:p><span style="text-align: center;">All the collages and the lists of business ideas.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi03g669qnu5mjICugCmm3X0JJ2_eQCHxkIEIyJcGKCcsaok5MkfUUfGHKvq7nQNd5GkO9PYzt9XEwNkvK6nNldl3pNXmrVNfLXiASc63YXR_T385YkXmYsO3HpnyV-XlbfsE4kMsvCsXsP/s1600/Nicaragua+146.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi03g669qnu5mjICugCmm3X0JJ2_eQCHxkIEIyJcGKCcsaok5MkfUUfGHKvq7nQNd5GkO9PYzt9XEwNkvK6nNldl3pNXmrVNfLXiASc63YXR_T385YkXmYsO3HpnyV-XlbfsE4kMsvCsXsP/s1600/Nicaragua+146.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Martita, the Director, demonstrating all the business ideas that can come out of one image.</div>
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In the follow up session in two weeks, they will get more
into the methodology of making business plans and budgets and such. I actually think that the way things worked
out makes a lot of sense. They’ll start
out with the more abstract, motivational workshop about entrepreneurship and
their own capacity to be entrepreneurs.
They will then attend the skills workshops, and actually get an idea of
how long it takes and how much it costs to make the products. They will then return to the business side,
and be able to factor in the experience of making the products into their
business plans.</div>
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The jewelry workshop was also last week, but I also
wanted to share a few quick stories from the retreat, so I’ll give you updates
about making jewelry soon (and it really will be soon, I promise). </div>
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We—two of the other interns and Alex, the Program
Coordinator—started the retreat on Saturday, the 20<sup>th</sup> with a stop in
Masaya to visit the artisan market, where I bought a few gifts, as well as a
pair of sandals for myself. We then went
to the Laguna del Apoyo, a lagoon outside of Masaya, and spent that evening and
much of the next day swimming and relaxing there. The water was really lovely, and the lagoon
was really beautiful. Below are a couple
of pictures, but they really don’t do it justice. </div>
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On Sunday afternoon, we met up with a brigade of
volunteers who had come to work with FSD for two weeks building ovens in Las
Salinas. With them, we went to Granada,
checked into our hotel, and had pizza for dinner. I like most of the food I’ve eaten here in
Nicaragua, but let me tell you, that pizza <i>really</i>
hit the spot after five weeks of beans and rice for a good 80% of my
meals. The pizza even had olives and
artichoke hearts … sigh, so good. On
Monday morning, the other interns, Alex, and I went to a museum in an old
convent that had a lot of Nicaraguan art, including some indigenous
pieces. </div>
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The view of the volcano Mombacho and the Cathedral from the back patio of the museum.</div>
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We ate leftover pizza for lunch, and headed back shortly
afterward. We actually didn’t see too
much of Granada, but after frantically writing grants and planning workshops
and buying supplies, it was quite nice to take a bit of a break and just relax.</div>
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Anyway, as I said, I’ll have an update on the jewelry
workshops pronto. And Friday is the
pastry workshop, so I am quite looking forward to sharing how that goes. Thanks again for reading and for your
generosity, and I hope you all have wonderful day! </div>
Christy Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09912738496371937763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-2714479845697914552013-07-20T09:19:00.000-06:002013-07-20T09:19:22.454-06:00Nicaragua: Encuentros y Ferias<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Hello,
all! Once again, apologies for my
silence here on the blog these last several days. As mentioned, I have been super busy writing
a grant proposal. (And then, due to an unforeseen
bus breakdown, I got stranded in Las Salinas on Thursday night, so although I
wrote this blog post a few days ago, I am just now getting the chance to revise
and publish it.) But as of Monday, the
proposal is turned in, and I can resume business as usual. It was a lot of work getting all the pieces
of the proposal together, and I am perfectly aware that we might not win
it. But in any case, writing it was
definitely a great learning experience for me.
Moreover, I think that all the analyzing and planning we had to do in order
to write the proposal made the project better than it would have been if we had
just jumped straight to the funding campaign.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Speaking
of the funding campaign, I want to thank you all so very much for your generous
donations to the project! The campaign ended on Thursday, and thanks to all of
you, we have raised $644—more than double what we need to cover all the
expenses of the workshops! This means
that even if we don’t win the grant, we will have more than enough funds to
cover all the necessary expenses, plus extras to expand the program, purchase
starting materials for the participants to get their new businesses off the
ground, and plan follow-up events to keep the momentum going after I head back
to the U.S. I am so extremely grateful
to all of you who have donated and who have spread the word about the project.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Anyway,
enough about fundraising. I wasn’t
writing grants 100% of the time these two weeks, and I have some stories I’d
like to share.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">On
Monday, July 8, we held a gathering, or an </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">encuentro</i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">,
of the </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">promotoras </i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">(the women of the
network of Women’s Rights Defenders, which was established in 2012 by the
intern who came before me) in Las Salinas.
The purpose of the </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">encuentro</i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">
was to allow the </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">promotoras</i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"> to share
their experiences with their </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">activist</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"> and education endeavors in their
respective communities, allow them to express any ongoing needs, and get their
input on the workshop series we are planning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Attending
the <i>encuentro</i> was boy a lovely and a
heartbreaking experience for me. Some of
the women there have experienced really terrible abuse or exploitation at the
hands of their husbands, their employers, or others in their community. They spoke about the prevalence of violence
against women, and how when children grow up in a household where women are
abused, they often come to accept that abuse as the normal way of things,
rather than something that can and should be changed. They spoke about how women who are abused
verbally and psychologically often tend to internalize the degrading messages
they hear and come to believe that they are of little or no value. Some then shared personal stories of abuse
they had suffered (which for confidentiality I will not repeat here).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">My
heart broke to hear these stories. But
there was also a great deal of hope shared too. The women spoke about how much
they had </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">benefited</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"> from the trainings on women’s rights, and the difference
that information had made in their own lives and the lives of their families. They spoke about how they had taken ownership
of their rights and had come to believe that not only did they deserve better,
they were also protected under the law and had the right to expect the
fulfillment of that protection. They
spoke about their obligation to be examples to their communities: if they
wanted other women to come to understand their rights, they, the </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">promotoras</i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">, must live their own lives,
and teach their children to live their lives, in a way that affirms, rather
than degrades, the dignity, value, and rights of women. I saw in these women such a hunger to learn,
to grow, and to work for the good their families and their communities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
The <i>promotoras</i> discussing their work during the <i>encuentro</i>.</div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Here
is a picture of the group of </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">promotoras</i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">
(and me; I am, obviously, the fair-skinned one on the left).</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">These women amaze me, and they shatter any
stereotypical expectations anyone might have about the poor, helpless
Nicaraguans who need saving.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">They might
not have access to the resources or the education that many U.S. Americans
have, but they have so much passion, initiative, and resourcefulness.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
was another notable event this past week I wanted to tell you all about. Last Sunday, July 14, Sarah, another FSD
intern who started before I came, helped host a community fair in the
neighboring community of Nancimí. She
worked with the clinic there, so the fair started as a health fare—representatives
from the clinic where there to do free HIV testing and give consultations. But the event expanded to include people from
all over the community. There were a few
teen girls selling their handmade crafts, lots of vendors selling delicious
food, a local natural medicine group, and a man selling beautiful handmade
jewelry boxes. A group from Casa de la
Mujer also came and put on a skit about AIDS and <i>machismo</i>, a group of young girls did a few dances, and a local boys’
soccer team played a game against the team from Rivas. I walked over with my hosts sisters in the
morning (about an hour-long walk though really lovely countryside) and spend
most of the day there, eating, watching the presentations, and just sitting and
enjoying the community atmosphere.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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The park in Nancimí all decked out for the fair.</div>
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Anyeri, who is my host mom's sister, Sarah's host mom, and the head of the community fair committee, introducing the fair and welcoming all the guests.</div>
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Don Clemente, the man I mentioned who makes the beautiful intricate jewelry boxes. This photo doesn't do justice to the detail.</div>
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A drumline--ah, memories of marching band.</div>
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Vendors preparing and selling tacos and enchiladas (though Nicaraguan tacos and enchiladas are rather different from Mexican tacos and enchiladas).</div>
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Vendors selling handmade flowers, jewelry, and paintings.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The boys' soccer game. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
entry has been rather lengthy, so hopefully you all enjoyed all the
stories. As of yesterday, I have exactly
one month left in Nicaragua, meaning I am past the half-way point. It simultaneously feels like I’ve been here
for ages, and like the time has flown.
In these remaining weeks, I’m really looking forward to going forward
with the project and continuing to build relationships with my host family and
my larger host community. Also, today I
am off to Granada for a mid-internship retreat, so I’m also looking forward to
relaxing a little and getting to do a little sightseeing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thanks
again to those who donated to the project, and thanks for reading. ¡Que se cuiden!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Christy Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09912738496371937763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-15551528589954217932013-07-12T17:19:00.001-06:002013-07-12T17:36:54.224-06:00Nicaragua: A chance to help!<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Hello, friends! I
bring you this special Friday update to let you all know about an opportunity
to get personally involved in the work I’m doing down here in Nicaragua.</div>
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As I have mentioned, I am helping Casa de la Mujer plan
and implement a workshop series on entrepreneurship. The series will begin with a workshop on
starting and managing a small business.
The participants will then divide into two groups, one that will learn
to make jewelry and one that will learn to make a few different pastries. Casa de la Mujer will provide the
participants advice and support in the coming months in the hopes that they
will use these skills to start a small commercial enterprise. The series will then conclude with a workshop
about Law 779, The Comprehensive Law against Violence towards Women, such that
the women living in these communities may better know their legal rights and the
resources that exist to help them should they suffer any sort of abuse.</div>
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As I have also mentioned, I have been in the process of
writing a grant to secure funding for this event. However, the grant application with FSD is a
competition, meaning that it is not certain that I will receive funding. Even if I do an excellent job writing the
grant proposal, another intern here or at another FSD site might have an even
better idea. So in order to be sure that
my project is funded, I am also launching an online fundraising campaign.<br />
<br />
The funds we need to raise will cover the materials for the workshops (notebooks, paper, beads, thread, flour, sugar, etc.), fees for some of the instructors, and refreshments for the participants (which is very important in Nicaraguan culture; it's expected that if you are hosting an all-day event, you will serve food. Hospitality, from what I have experienced of their culture, is a big cultural value). If we do not win the grant, this campaign
will ensure that we can still carry out this project. In the event that I do win the grant (or if
you all are super generous and we exceed our goal), we will be able to expand
the program and make it even better—opening it up to more participants,
purchasing starting materials for the women to use as the initial boost in
launching their businesses, and expanding the follow-up activities that Casa de
la Mujer will carry out after I leave.</div>
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This is where you come in! If you are interested in my work down here in
Tola and if you are able to help out, I would love it if you could chip in a
little bit to help empower the women on this community. Our current fundraising goal is $350, meaning
that if only 20 people chipped in just $20, we would easily exceed our goal.<br />
<br />
The deadline to donate is <b>this coming Thursday, July 18</b>--meaning we have only <b>one week</b> to meet our goal!</div>
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If you are interested in donating, please click the
following link for more information:</div>
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<a href="http://www.fsdinternational.org/donate/projects/christina">http://www.fsdinternational.org/donate/projects/christina</a></div>
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I would really love it if you could help out in getting
this project funded. The women whom I
have met through Casa de la Mujer’s network of Women’s Rights Promoters are all
such amazing, dedicated, and strong people, and I really hope that my work here
can be of assistance to them in expanding their efforts in the communities of
Tola.</div>
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Best wishes to all, and thanks in advance for your
generosity!</div>
Christy Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09912738496371937763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-70614693832598250222013-07-09T17:58:00.001-06:002013-07-09T17:59:01.773-06:00Nicaragua: Algunas fotosHello, internet. My apologies for the silence this week. It has mostly been spent writing a grant proposal for the workshop series we are planning--a process that is interesting for me as a learning experience, but not such interesting blog material. I do have some interesting stories to share with you--we had a gathering yesterday of all the women in the network of Women's Rights Promoters, and I spent the night last night in the neighboring town of Nancimi to get to know that community a bit--but I'm feeling a bit frantic with the grant, as it is due Friday. Meaning you shall probably have to wait until next weekend for a proper update.<br />
<br />
So in the meantime, to tide you over, here are a few photos of Tola, the town where I live. I hope you enjoy, and more updates to come soon! ¡Abrazos!<br />
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The park in the center of Tola. I love the pastel colors with which it's painted.</div>
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The Catholic church, also in the center of town, across the street from the park.</div>
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The main street of Tola. You can see some of the pulperías, which is what they call the little grocery/convenience stores where they buy food and necessities. (And for my Spanish speaking friends, no it's not a store that sells octopus; that was what I originally thought, and my host sisters thought that was hilarious when I asked them about it.)</div>
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FSD's office in Tola.</div>
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The Nazarene church my host family attends.</div>
<br />Christy Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09912738496371937763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-6824960069740469622013-06-30T16:58:00.001-06:002013-06-30T16:58:27.431-06:00Nicaragua: La Casa de la Mujer<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span lang="ES">Nicaragua:
Semana 2, la Casa de la Mujer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Hola a todos! It
is Sunday the 30th of June as I write this, and the end of my second week in
Nicaragua. This week has focused mostly
on getting to know Casa de la Mujer, the organization where I will be working,
and drafting out what I will be doing while I am there. They seemed to have a pretty firm idea of
what they wanted to do with me before I arrived, so Monday consisted of working
out deadlines for all the various steps that need to be completed in order to
plan the events.</div>
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The project I will be working on has two parts. First, they want to reinforce the work that
was done by Corrie, the intern who worked at Casa de la Mujer before me. She worked on implementing a network of Women’s
Rights Promoters, who go into the various communities in Tola to teach the
women who live there about their rights and about how they can seek justice if
they have been abused. In order to carry
on with this project, we are first going to have an “<i>intercambio</i>”, or a meeting where all the promoters from the
different communities come together to share experiences and advice and talk
about what more they want to do with the program. Then, later in August, we are planning a
workshop about the new Law 779, <i>La Ley
Integral Contra la Violencia Hacia Mujeres </i>(Comprehensive Law Against
Violence Towards Women), which was just recently passed in January 2012. According to the <i>Instituto Nicaragüense de la Mujer </i>(the Nicaraguan Women’s
Institute), the law “aims to improve public policies on violence prevention and
eradicate gender discrimination” (translation mine). <sup>1<o:p></o:p></sup></div>
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The second part of the project is focused on developing
the economic empowerment of the women in Tola.
The municipio of Tola—especially the communities closer to the beach,
like Las Salinas and Limón—have experienced a massive boom in tourism in the
last few years (in fact, there was a big surf competition just a few days
before I arrived, and surfers from around the world came to the area to
compete). So my supervisors, Martita and
Teresita, wanted to teach the women in those communities some skills they can
use to start small businesses marketed at said tourists. So at the moment, we are planning a workshop
on how to start and run a small business, and then three workshops on different
products around which to build a small business—one workshop on jewelry making,
and two on baking/pastry making. We
still have to finalize details, but that’s basically the framework of the
project I’ll be working one.</div>
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<o:p> </o:p></div>
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I also got a chance to get to know observe a few other of
the activities of Casa de la Mujer. On
Wednesday, there was an informational fair in the park in Rivas about drug
prevention, AIDS prevention, and other health issues—apparently, June 26<sup>th</sup>
is the International Day of the Fight Against Drugs (in Spanish, <i>El Día Internacional de la Lucha Contra las
Drogas</i>). A few different organizations
and government ministries, like the Ministry of Health, participated. Casa de la Mujer was there, handing out
information about gender-based violence and women’s health. Below are a couple pictures of the event.</div>
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On Thursday, I visited the first part of the meeting of
the group Auto Ayuda, which is a support group for women who’ve experienced
violence or abuse, either physical or psychological. I only came for a little while at the
beginning of the meeting, to say hi to the women and here about what the group
does. Once they started sharing their
stories, I left, because all the information shared at the meetings is
confidential. It was really great,
though, to hear the women talk about how participating in Auto Ayuda helped
them heal from the abuse they had experienced and had helped them regain a
sense of confidence and self-worth.</div>
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Yesterday morning, I travelled out to Las Salinas to
invite the women in the network of Women’s Rights Promoters who live in that
area to the <i>intercambio</i> we are
planning. Several of the Las Salinas
women in the network are also part of a cooperative that, among other things,
makes organic compost using worms and cow dung.
They were working on that when Alex (the FSD Program Coordinator here in
Tola) and I went to see them. It was
really interesting to see their work and talk with them about the project.</div>
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Aside from work, I’ve also gotten to spend a lot of time
with my host family, just sharing stories or playing games or watching the
finals of Miss Teen Nicaragua with the girls.
They attend the Nazarene church here in Tola, so last Sunday and this
morning I went to church with them. I’m
really happy to have found a faith community to be a part of while I am here
and that I can attend with my host family.
The congregation has a very strong sense of community and mutual love
and support, and they have been so welcoming of me.</div>
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As usual, there are a lot more stories I could probably
tell, but for the sake of conciseness I shall wrap it up here. This week I’ll begin working on writing a
grant proposal for the project I’m working on and drafting a budget, so
hopefully I should have some interesting updates for you next weekend! <span lang="ES">In
the meantime, que todos se cuiden, y hablamos muy pronto. ¡Abrazos!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="ES">Sources:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<sup><span lang="ES">1</span></sup><a href="http://www.inim.gob.ni/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1149:ley-779&catid=1:latest-news"><span lang="ES">http://www.inim.gob.ni/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1149:ley-779&catid=1:latest-news</span></a><span lang="ES"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Christy Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09912738496371937763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-17985638572529640902013-06-22T17:55:00.000-06:002013-06-30T17:00:23.844-06:00Nicaragua: Llegada y orientaciónHello, everyone! I am resurrecthing this old blog to update you about my latest adventure—I am currently in Tola, Nicaragua, for a 9 week internship with the non-profit organization, the Foundation for Sustainable Development.<br />
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For those of you who don’t know where Tola is, it’s a municipality (so, kind of like a county) in the department (their equivalent of a state) of Rivas, on the west coast and southern edge of the country, between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific Ocean. I live in the urban center of Tola, a small town of about 500 people, but there are a few other small communities where FSD works and where other interns live in the area, including Las Salinas de Nagualpa, Limón 1, Limón 2, and Nancimi. Below is a map of those communities:
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I am living with a host family here in Tola: Araceli, a single mother in her thirties who works at a factory in the city of Rivas (about 20 minutes east of Tola by car), and her two teenage daughters, Valeria and Wilmara (I’m not actually sure if that’s how she spells it, but that’s what it sounds like). They are fantastic, and so very welcoming. I have loved getting to know them, talk to them about what it’s like living here in Tola, help Valeria with her English homework, and so on.<br />
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I have been here a week already, during which time we had orientation. Most of the orientation took place in the community of Las Salinas de Nagualpa, where Cecilia, the other intern who started at the same time as I did, will be living. I stayed with her and her host family (who were also extremely welcoming) during those days. Orientation consisted of several PowerPoint presentations regarding FSD’s approach to sustainability, Nicaraguan culture and history, personal safety and health tips, and some tools for who to go about the work we’ll be doing. We also did some survey exercises, where we developed a list of questions—the first time about Las Salinas in general, the needs that exist in the community, and what is being done to address them, the second time, more targeted to our area of focus, (so, in my case, women’s rights)—and went around the community asking people said questions. Given that speaking to strangers is not my forte, and that Spanish is my second language, this was kind of terrifying at first, but I think it ended up being a really good exercise, both because it pushed me to get outside my comfort zone and talk to people, and because the things they had to say were really interesting.<br />
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FSD partners with local community organizations that already exist in the community, and then matches the interns they accept with said organizations based on the interests and skills of the intern and the needs of the organizations. I will be working with the Casa de la Mujer in the city of Rivas. Yesterday I went in to meet my supervisor, Teresita, and learn about what they do. They have a variety of programs in support of women’s rights and women’s empowerment, including a medical clinic, a lawyer who offers legal advice to victims of abuse or violence, campaigns against gender-based violence, educational programs about women’s rights (as Teresita was telling me, some women don’t know that they have the right not to be abused, because for them that’s just the way life is), and classes on vocational skills. This morning, I went in again to observe their Saturday morning classes. The offer classes on hair styling/beauty, baking, cake decorating, sewing, psychology, law, computer skills, accounting, administration, and so on. It was really great getting to talk to the instructors and some of the students, hear about what they do, and see all the variety of programs that the Casa de la Mujer puts on.<br />
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On Monday I start working, and during this first week, I will develop the first draft of my “work plan”—that is, the project I am going to develop and the strategy for getting there. Though when I say “the project I am going to develop,” what I mean is, “the project I am going to help the organization develop and implement.” That was a very important and emphasized element of our orientation material: we, the interns and the FSD team, are not here to do things for the people of Nicaragua, we are here to support them in the process of learning how to identify their needs and their collective goals and implement them for themselves. So my tasks this week will involve learning what the organization is in need of, what the people they serve need and want, and what I can bring to the table to help them accomplish those goals.<br />
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This blog entry feels very abbreviated, as there is so much more that I have experienced in the past week. But I should have internet a bit more consistently now, so I can try to update more often. In the meantime, I hope you all are well, thanks for reading, and talk to you soon! ¡Abrazos!
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-28337428210978541052011-07-05T22:09:00.000-06:002011-12-05T00:48:01.381-07:00The Next AdventureHello, all. First, a comic to sum up my Honors class that I have been blogging about lately:<br /><br />http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/turtles.png<br /><br />Thanks again to the ever wonderful xkcd.<br /><br />I just wanted to post a quick update on what I'm doing now. Tomorrow morning I am heading out to Half Moon Bay, CA, to start a fellowship with the Not for Sale Campaign. It's a non-profit organization that works to fight slavery and human trafficking. This is a cause I have felt passionate about and been involved in for a few years, and I'm very excited to take the next step and becoming more involved.<br /><br />Ideally, I would like to do some blogging this fall, although, as we all know, I'm not the most consistent blogger. But one can always hope. In the meantime, for any who are interested, you can read about Not for Sale at the following link:<br /><br />www.notforsalecampaign.org<br /><br />Also, this is an unpaid position, meaning I have to do some fundraising work. So if any you feel able to and called to support me, you can do so here:<br /><br />https://nfs.webconnex.com/christy<br /><br />Thanks, all, and I'll try to stay in touch.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-3035437716728093482011-04-17T16:14:00.000-06:002011-04-17T16:15:00.097-06:00Response: Barney and AndrejevicThis week I am responding to Prometheus Wired: The Hope ofr Deomcracy in the Age of Network Technology by David Barney and iSpy: Surveillance and Poer in the Interactive Era by Mark Andrejevic.<br /><br />This week’s prompt:<br />[…]But what is the central reason for this disagreement: what, in other words, do the optimists “just not get” about digital media, according to Barney and Andrejevic? Do you think that the latter two writers might consider the work of the optimists to be a twenty-first century version of what the Marxists called “ideology”?<br /><br />Barney’s disagreement with the digital optimists seems to be similar to my disagreement with Hayek. I was annoyed with Hayek because I felt that in his idealistic exaltation of “maximum freedom of individual choice,” he was completely ignoring the reality of the many powerless people exploited by the choices of those who have the power to exercise their freedom of choice. Barney makes a similar argument. Although it may be true that the implementation of network and computerized technologies in the workforce would result in a net increase of jobs, as the creation of new types of jobs would outbalance the elimination of manufacturing jobs, Barney points out that those who held the eliminated jobs are not necessarily hired immediately into the new jobs (often, he says, they are not). He seems to feel that the digital optimists try to reduce human lives and all the implications therein to numbers: “The point here is that, even if jobs eliminated by network technology are eventualy replaced by jobs ‘elsewhere’ in the economy, the fact of their elimination is more significant in the lives of the people who held them than is their replacement with a job for somebody somewhere else” (135).<br /> <br />I wonder how Norbert Weiner would respond to Barney’s argument. I interpreted Weiner’s argument in The Human Use of Human Beings to be that both machines and humans have their place in production, and that once machines become available to fill certain tasks, they should be implemented, thereby freeing humans up for more appropriate activities. Weiner feels that to place a human in a job that should be given to a machine is to degrade the human. The human mind should be stimulated, not demeaned to menial, mindless tasks. As such, I think he would approve the use of network technologies that eliminate jobs in the manufacturing industry and the creation of more human appropriate jobs, although there are some positions which have been replaced with machines that he would probably not approve. However, it is difficult to make such an idealistic argument in the face of Barney’s numbers and unemployment rates. Would Weiner maintain that machines should still be implemented, and that concurrently targeted efforts should be made to reintegrate those who lost their jobs into the workforce in new positions?<br /><br />Andrejevic seems to disagree with the idea that the interactive nature of the internet will lead to a more egalitarian society. For him, this same interactivity praised by digital optimists is one of the key elements in the creation of digital enclosure. Despite claims towards egalitarianism, Andrejevic recognizes that someone still controls and has access to all the information that is exchanged through digital interaction. In an information economy, information is a kind of currency, and, according to Andrejevic, we willing turn over large amounts of this currency to the controllers of the information systems, creating an informational hierarchy: “A similar division of groups can be discerned in the emerging digital enclosure between those who control privatized interactive spaces (virtual or otherwise), and those who submit to particular forms of monitoring in order to gain access to goods, services, and conveniences” (3). Andrejevic does not buy Kelly’s idea that “the web runs on love, not greed.” The controllers of “privatized interactive spaces” only want to exploit the information of “those who submit” for profit. <br /><br />I found reading the opening pages of iSpy and Andrejevic’s description of Google’s plan for contextual advertising. Today, contextual advertising is an everyday occurrence, and while it is sometimes annoying, we don’t generally view it as having the same sinister qualities as does Andrejevic. Is this because it is really not so sinister after all, or are we just desensitized? Are we so used to submitting to the information controllers so we can get the goods and services we want that we cease to resent such advertising as an uninvited invasion of our privacy?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-33355513496500942952011-04-10T19:51:00.001-06:002011-04-10T19:51:56.880-06:00Response: Kelly, Lurie, and TrippiThis week I am responding to “The Web Runs on Love, not Greed,” “Making my own Music,” and “We Are the Web” by Kevin Kelly, “Why the Web Will Win the Culture Wars for the Left” by Peter Lurie, and The Revolution will not be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything” by John Trippi.<br /><br />This week’s prompt:<br />Like the writers for week twelve, those of week thirteen strike a strongly positive note about the future ... What do you make of their arguments? Are they too optimistic, or do you think that at least some of their predictions are likely to come true, if they haven't already?<br /><br />While the writers we read this week were rather optimistic, and often had a flair for the dramatic (Kelly’s repeated attribution of the term “miracle” to the internet, Trippi’s title “The Overthrow of Everything”), they did not strike me as naïve as Barlow’s “Declaration …” did. While they have high hopes for the transformative potential of the internet, their expectations seem to be built to a greater extent on facts or history. Trippi’s assessment of the internet’s power to mobilize and connect comes from his experience in the Howard Dean campaign, where it did precisely that. He notes the way the internet empowered members of the campaign, and from that observation he extrapolates that we as consumers will demand this same empowerment from all our usage of the internet. I think this, for one thing, has definitely proved to be true. From personalization of blogs and web pages, to sites selling custom-designed, made-to-order products, to the plethora of iPhone apps available for download, consumers seek convenience, choice, portability, and ease of access.<br /><br />Kelly’s argument is similar, in that he affirms that internet users will be driven to create content out of passion, not for profit. When internet users are empowered to create (blogs, vlogs, fan art, etc.), they will. Kelly portrays the relationship between the internet and its users as a symbiosis—the one offers a platform that empowers the other to keep the first going.<br /><br />I had some problems with Lurie’s argument. His argument is fundamentally McLuhanesque, in that the structure and nature of the internet promotes a deconstructionist manner of thinking in its users. I think this is generally a valid point, and I have also observed that people are less willing to trust a single source. However, I think in his assessment of the implications of this trend takes some things for granted which are highly debatable. He conflates religion and politics in his argument, assuming that the “right” is entirely made up of subscribers to centralized, authoritarian religions. While it may be true that more such religious people identify with the political right than with the left, he seems to think (or, at least phrases his argument as such) that this is an absolute categorization. There are, in fact, conservatives who identify as such for economic reasons (they favor the free market) or reasons of governance (they want less governmental interference) than for traditional social values. Lurie’s argument does not address why the deconstructionist nature of the internet would undermine these economically or politically conservative modes of thought. He also makes the converse assumption that all members of the political left are agnostic. This, also, is untrue. There are many religious liberals, and for some of them their belief in the importance of social welfare programs is fueled by a religious (even if unorthodox) faith. Would a deconstructionist system that will destroy religious belief challenge the reasons why such people identify as liberal, causing them, perhaps, to opt instead for a free market where they can pursue their own ends? Lurie does not address this possibility in his article, and I feel like it weakens his argument.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-22078175068201544432011-04-03T20:06:00.001-06:002011-04-03T20:37:17.659-06:00Response: Negroponte, Barlow, and GilderThis week I am responding to Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” and “Selling Wine Without Bottles: The Economy of Mind on the Global Net” by John Perry Barlow, and Life After Television by George Gilder<br /><br />While reading the Barlow essay “Selling Wine Without Bottles” and Barlow’s discussion of how our information-age, material-based mindset concerning intellectual property cannot be applied to the digital age, I was reminded of Melissa Anelli’s discussion of how copyright infringement and intellectual property was negotiated in the early days of the Harry Potter fandom and its presence on the internet. Anelli is the webmistress of the Leaky Cauldron, a popular Harry Potter fansite. Her book, Harry, A History, details the growth and development of the Harry Potter fandom. I unfortunately did not bring my copy of the book to school with me, so I can’t quote the direct passage. However, points out that the beginnings of the Harry Potter fandom were concurrent with the internet’s rapid development as a community forum (the Y2K era). In this time, fans began making fan websites, fan art, fan fiction, etc., using names and terms from the Harry Potter books. When Warner Brothers bought the rights for the Potter films, they began cracking down on what they felt to be copyright infringement, targeting these fansites. There was a highly publicized of a twelve-year-old girl, who had started a Harry Potter fansite, receiving a “cease-and-desist” letter from Warner Brothers. Being twelve, she, quite understandably, freaked out, thinking she was about to be sued or arrested or something. There was a great deal of backlash against Warner Brothers after this, and in the ensuing months they worked out exactly how to respond to these unauthorized usages of Harry Potter names and terms. <br /><br />Again, I regret that I don’t have the book with me, so I can’t precisely say what the result was; I think it has something to do with making profit, but then again I know that wizard rock bands write music about Harry Potter and sell their music for profit. In any case, I think it’s an example of companies attempting to apply the industrial-age mindset described by Barlow to digital goods in the post-information age. While the use of the name “Harry Potter,” the term “Expelliarmus,” or the image of the Hogwarts crest in fan art may technically violate the sorts of copyrights we are accustomed to using, there just seems something wrong with penalizing a pre-teen for drawing a picture of Harry Potter and posting it online. J.K. Rowling herself, I think, has spoken a bit on the topic, and said that she is glad that people find her work and her world to be a source of creative inspiration, and she does not want to stifle that or to shut down conversations. I think this sort of negotiation that has occurred within the Harry Potter fandom is indicative of the negotiations that will need to happen in all sectors of “the economy of the mind” to achieve a system that allows free exchange of ideas but also does not violate a creator’s right to their creation.<br /><br />I mentioned wizard rock above, and I think that’s an example of Negroponte’s new Sunday painter. In chapter 18 of Being Digital, he says, “The middle ground between work and play will be enlarged dramatically. The crisp line between love and duty will blur by virtue of a common denominator—being digital. The Sunday painter is a symbol of a new era of opportunity and respect for creative avocations—lifelong making, doing, and expressing” (Ch. 18). Internet forums like YouTube, DeviantArt, and Etsy allow people the opportunity to, perhaps, turn their recreational arts-and-crafting into a source of profit. The internet allows them to find and appeal to niche markets—like “wrock” (wizard rock) for Harry Potter fans or “trock” (timelord rock) for Dr. Who fans. These internet platforms allow amateur artists a low-cost way of distributing their art to a wide audience, until they gain enough attention or fans to profit. This is one example of digital media’s empancipatory power, in that it creates greater freedom of expression.<br /><br />I think it’s interesting how both Negroponte and Gilder note an increasing emphasis on personalization and interactivity in our new technologies. In chapter 13, Negroponte describes the way new technologies can gather very specific demographic information about an individual, such that that individual’s devices may offer him or her extremely personalized information, recommendations, and advertisements. Similarly, Gilder discusses how the television, a one-way broadcast device, is giving way to the more interactive telecomputer: “Instead of a master-slave architecture in which every receiver can function as a processor and transmitter of video images and other information” (18). This capacity for user to interact with machine, and for user to interact with user via machine is what many of the Marxist writers (Ensenzberger, Baudrillard, etc.) we read earlier wanted in order to make new media truly democratic. The fact that more contemporary writers are noticing the existence of these trends is probably a source of their optimism. If the earlier, Marxist writers prescribed interactivity as the necessary change in media, and if interactivity is in fact encouraging, contemporary writers may feel that the democratization of the media is actually in their power.<br /><br />And now, for your listening pleasure, "The Bravest Man I Ever Knew" by The Ministry of Magic.<br /><br /><object style="height: 390px; width: 640px"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/JybrDuxRN78?version=3"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/JybrDuxRN78?version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="390"></object>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-48208958277042032052011-03-30T00:06:00.000-06:002011-03-30T00:07:25.098-06:00Response: Haraway, Plant, and TurkleThis week I am responding to Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, Chapter 8, “A Cyborg Manifesto” by Donna Haraway, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, Chapter 9, “Virtuality and its Discontents” by Sherry Turkle, and “Ada Lovelace and the Loom of Life” by Sadie Plant in The Object of Labor: Art, Cloth, and Cultural Production.<br /><br />This week’s prompt is:<br />What political potential might radical feminists (or radicals of any stripe for that matter) find in the new media forms that are absent in the mass media world of the decades immediately following the Second World War?<br /><br />It seems that, for the writers we read this week, the primary political potential in new digital media lies in the ability to dissociate oneself from traditional labels and categories that have, historically, been used as justification for disenfranchisement or disempowerment: gender, race, class, etc. The anonymity of the internet would allow members of these groups to express their ideas and creativity apart from these restrictive classifications. Cyberspace represents for these writers a deconstruction of artificial, repressive social categories. <br /><br />This is certainly so for Haraway. She rejoices in the fluid nature of the cyborg: “[Cyborgs] are as hard to see politically as materially. They are about consciousness—or its simulation” (153). The cyborg, according to Haraway, distills human interaction down to pure consciousness. This, she says, “changes what counts as women’s experience in the late twentieth century,” because it blurs all sorts of constructed boundaries—not only race, class, gender, and so on, but also human-animal, or material-immaterial (149). As a feminist, she sees this blurring of boundaries as a deconstruction of artificial conceptions of femininity: “There is nothing about being ‘female’ that naturally binds women. There is not even such a state as ‘being’ female, itself a highly complex category constructed in contested scientific discourses and other social practices” (155). Modern electronic media will change women’s experience by allowing them modes of expression previously denied to them due to such socially-imposed constructions.<br /><br />Plant gives a more historical view of the way the development of electronic media has influenced and involved women. She details the relation between computers and textiles, a craft generally associated with women, and discusses the history of women and computers, beginning with Ada Lovelace and continuing through twentieth-century women computer programmers. While her argument may be less theoretical than Haraway’s, she makes a case for computers and electronic media as an achievement of women as well as men. She marks an important place for them in a field which, today, is often associated with males, thus emphasizing their capacity to partake in a traditionally “masculine” discipline. She does not attempt to argue that women are somehow innately suited for computer work, as Freud tried to argue that women are innately suited for textiles. Rather, she indicates that women were allowed entry to the world of programming because it was considered menial, like weaving (p. 262). Once allowed entry, they excelled in ways that would be influential in the development of contemporary electronic media. Plant sets forth women’s historical involvement with the development of computers as a testament to their ability to excel in traditionally male industries, thereby undermining the assertions of Freud and others that women cannot think analytically.<br /><br />While Turkle focuses less on women and more on middle-class young adults, she, like Haraway, discusses the empowerment offered by internet’s deconstruction of accepted social categories and norms. In the world of MUDs, people’s ability to recreate themselves as they desire offers them a sense of empowerment they may not feel in their real life. Although she seems wary of the conflation of simulation and reality, she does remark the greater level of participation exhibited by members of cyber-communities. Like Haraway, Turkle affirms that the disassociation of self from embodiment is empowering. She does offer a caveat: “The challenge is to integrate some meaningful personal responsibility in virtual environments. Virtual environments are valuable as places where we can acknowledge our inner diversity. But we still want an authentic experience of self” (p. 254). Haraway does not seem to share this concern for authenticity—she rejoices at the way cyberspace blurs all boundaries. Turkle, on the other hand, only values the empowerment of cyberspace to the extent that it does not replace simulation for reality. While she may also appreciate cyberspace’s capacity to deconstruct borders, it is useless to her if it results in an inability to discern or an apathy towards reality.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-64267814390541255922011-03-20T20:01:00.004-06:002011-03-20T20:13:10.281-06:00Response: Turner, Hayles, and Disneyland!!This week I am responding to From Counterculture to Cyberculture by Fred Turner, chapters 2 and 6, and How We Became Posthuman by Katherine Hayles.<br /><br />While reading the section about cybernetic art worlds in chapter 2, “Stewart Brand Meets the Cybernetic Counterculture” or Turner’s book, his descriptions of the artistic environments created by the various avant-garde movements of the mid-20th century reminded me a lot of something that is generally not considered to be countercultural or subversive: Disneyland.<br /><br />I am sure that several hippies are now rolling over in their graves. They must be scandalized that I would compare their art to something so corporate, so businessy, so, well, Disneyfied as the Disney parks. But hear me out. I have always perceived a great deal of artistry in the Disney parks, and I think the very reasons why those avant-garde movements found meaning in their particular mode of expression may be applied to the Disney parks and may explain in part why they have achieved such a devoted, enduring fan base. True, the Disney parks are constructed upon a business model, which the avant-garde artists would have shunned, but the parks reach a level and species of artistic and emotional engagement that I find similar to what the cybernetic artists tried to create.<br /><br />The first passage in which I was reminded of the Disney parks was in the description of USCO’s cybernetic art productions: <br /><br />Rather than work with a transmission model of communication, in which performers or others attempt to send a message to their audience, USCO events tried to take advantage of what Gerd Stern called “the environmental circumstance.” That is, USCO constructed all-encompassing technological environments, theatrical ecologies in which the audience was simply one species of being among many, and waited to observe their effects (51).<br /><br />This is exactly what the Disney parks are. In my own private musings (because I am the sort of nerd who muses about the artistic classification of the Disney parks), I have called the parks “immersive, interactive, environmental theatre,” a description which sounds very similar to Stern’s idea of “the environmental circumstance.” Like USCO’s performances, The Disney parks use a variety of technologies, appealing to all five senses, to create intricately themed environments that engage with guests on artistic levels. To me, this is the biggest difference between the Disney parks and the average theme park—for example, a Six Flags. The latter is really just about thrills and fun. Honestly, most of the roller coasters in Six Flags parks are more intense and thrilling than those in the Disney parks. But that’s all, really. Adrenaline rush, yummy food, adrenaline rush, fun show—thrills removed from any sort of artistic engagement. In the Disney parks, on the other hand, the thrills are always part of a greater story, be it an epic adventure—chasing the Yeti on “Expedition Everest” or experiencing the paranormal on “The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror”—or a short, poetic snapshot—the sights, sounds, and smells from a hang glider in “Soaring Over California” or the excitement of rushing to a rock concert in “Rock’N’Roller Coaster.” <br /><br />Every detail in the parks and the attractions is minutely, carefully crafted to totally immerse guests in environment and story, from the subtly transitioning music moving between lands to the forced perspective used to make the castle and the buildings on Main Street look taller than they actually are. One of my favorite bits of trivia has to do with the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. The story of this attraction is that one day, at the Hollywood Tower Hotel, sometime in the 1920s, all the guests of the hotel suddenly disappeared in to … (in my best Rod Serling voice) the Twilight Zone. In order to thoroughly create the illusion that everyone had disappeared in a moment, there are several props strewn about in the lobby, including an in-progress Parcheesi game. Rather than just placing pieces on the board, the Imagineers hired two professional Parcheesi players to play for an hour. At the end of the hour, the players had to get up and leave the table, leaving the pieces where they were, to create the illusion that the fictional players had actually disappeared.<br /><br />Turner mentions many times the techno-mysticism in the work of the USCO artists; they availed themselves of all sorts of technology to explore how they could be used artistically, to create an effect or to heighten the consciousness of the audience. This most definitely applies to the Disney parks. Disney has always been on the cutting edge of examining the artistic potential of new technologies. This tradition goes back to Walt himself, who, upon seeing an audio-animatronic bird, became enamored of the technology, and immediately began considering how to use and improve this technology. Disney continues this tradition today with such attractions as the World of Color water show in Disney’s California Adventure. This show uses fountains, laser projections on screens of water, pyrotechnics, music, and animation to create a spectacular and moving show. However, despite Disney’s use of new technologies to create new types of effects, it is the way it uses technologies that is truly telling. Today, we have ceased to be awed or surprised by audio-animatronic figures, but attractions like Pirate of the Caribbean continue to be beloved because of how they use older technologies to tell a story. They bend these technologies to a greater artistic effect, and so they continue to hold emotional significance even after the technology itself loses its novelty.<br /><br />Finally, Turner describes a sense of “mystical together-ness” that the USCO artists strove to cultivate: “they aimed not only to help their audiences become more aware of their surroundings but also to help them imagine themselves as members of a mystical community” (52). In my experience, the Disney parks are one of the best environments for creating such a sense of “mystical together-ness.” From the oft-heard “Have a magical day!” to the excitement over seeing a favorite character, to the feeling of camaraderie with other guests, this sense of community is pervasive in the parks. When I was last at Disneyland, last November, I went with my friend Lisa, who had never been before. Upon first entering the park, we went to City Hall to get her “First Visit” button. Throughout our three days at the park, guests and cast members alike congratulated her on her first visit and asked if she was having a good time. That sort of conversation that would be strange anywhere else, but it feels natural within the communal air of the parks. While the avant-garde artists used psychedelic drugs to create this effect, the Imagineers use the much simpler drugs of endorphin highs and adrenaline rushes to create the same feeling.<br /><br />As is probably clear by now, I could talk about Disney forever. So I will conclude with the thought that, although it is true that the Disney parks have a much larger business component than movements like USCO, they share many of the same artistic qualities and techniques. This all to argue that the Disney parks are not, as many critics would say, merely monuments to consumerism and mass media. They are truly immersive works of art.<br />One final observation on this front. Disneyland Park opened in 1955, concurrent with many of these avant-garde movements. I am not inclined to think this is coincidence.<br /><br />A few words on Hayles, now that I have blabbered so long about Disney. I found what she said about the self being an information-processing entity (I can’t find her exact wording) interesting, and I think it might help explain the phenomenon observed by Foucault of or cultural obsession with the idea of an author. If the self is basically information, and the body is just a prosthesis, then one’s writing is, in a way, actually part of oneself. In fact, it may be considered more an expression of self than the body, because writing is made of information, not matter, so it is essentially more similar to an informational self. Hayles does not seem to think that this conception of self as pure information is the best (she seems to want to celebrate, rather than reject, the human material existence), but the existence of that conception may explain why we want to attach an author to a work so badly. We want to have some conception of the “self” behind that piece of writing. If the writing is an extension of the author’s self, it seems to make sense to use the same signifier for the work that we use for the writer—the writer’s name.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-14335468873329123422011-03-06T19:35:00.001-07:002011-03-06T19:35:56.548-07:00Response: HayekThis week I am responding to The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich von Hayek.<br /><br />It seems to me that for Hayek, the most important value, which should be preserved at all costs, is individual freedom of choice. I may be not fully understanding or oversimplifying his position, but he seems to think that any restriction of individual choice will propel us rapidly down the slippery slope to totalitarianism. While reading this week’s selections, I couldn’t help but feeling that his viewpoint comes from a place of privilege (I’m using it a casual sense, not in his sense). He writes with contempt about restrictions which would turn individuals into means “to be used by the authority in the service of such abstractions as the ‘social welfare’ or the ‘good of the community’” (96). Even restrictions intended to aid the common good are dangerous in Hayek’s eyes.<br /><br />I am not very educated in politics or economics, but I do a lot of volunteer work with social justice, so I thought about his argument in terms of Fair Trade. For those who don’t know, Fair Trade is a certification process that ensures that growers in other countries are paid fair wages for their labor and use sustainable agricultural procedures. You can read more about it here. It’s especially important in industries like the chocolate industry, in which slave labor and the exploitation of children is a huge problem. So, in that light, it’s hard for me to take Hayek’s obsession with individual choice seriously. A certification like Fair Trade does, in fact, individual choice. When a chocolate brand agrees to supply only Fair Trade chocolate, it is agreeing to submit itself to certain restrictions. So yes, it does decrease the freedom of choice of the chocolate makers. <br /><br />However, let’s look at the other end of the spectrum. What about a young African boy, living in forced labor on a chocolate plantation? Without a labor restriction like Fair Trade, what options would he have? Continue to live as a slave on the chocolate farm, run away to try to find other options in an area where chocolate plantations are nearly the only option, or to try to make his way in a world where he has no education or qualifications to recommend him. Hayek wrote about the power that a monopoly holds over consumers—in this case, the owner of the chocolate plantation holds a monopoly on food and shelter as far as the boy is concerned. So how likely is the boy to leave a life of forced labor, when it is his only known source of life and sustenance? In this case, a labor restriction like a Fair Trade certification would give that boy more individual freedom of choice. If he lived on a Fair Trade farm, his family might have enough money to give their children more options, even potentially an education. So, a restriction in the name of the “social welfare” or the “good of the community, “abstractions” of which Hayek writes with scorn, does in face increase individual freedom of choice, just for those at the bottom of the economic spectrum, not those at the top. It seems to me that Hayek is only really concerned for the maintenance of individual choice for himself and others in his class, as he disregards the idea that measures which benefit the “common good” benefit many individuals, allowing them greater freedom of choice in what they do with their lives.<br /><br />Again, I may have misunderstood his argument and have just gone a Fair Trade rant for no reason. He may be referring to other types of restrictions (government imposed, rather than voluntary). But as a supporter of Fair Trade, I couldn’t help getting irritated at his dismissal of the individual freedoms of agricultural workers in developing countries as merely elements of some abstract “social welfare.”Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-70714590302494316102011-02-20T19:25:00.000-07:002011-02-20T19:58:12.846-07:00Response: Debord and BaudrillardThis week I am responding to The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord and “Requiem for the Media” by Jean Baudrillard. <br /><br />First, some informal reactions:<br /><br />I could not help getting really annoyed with Debord. First of all, he started out saying all these things about “the spectacle” without defining what exactly he meant by the term. Although I was sort of able to piece it together and figure out what he meant, it would have been so much easier for me to read and internalize his thoughts if I knew what he was talking about in the first place. Perhaps this was intentional (using the textual form to reflect theme and all that jazz) but it was still irritating. Secondly, his prose was so purple, and he seemed to delight in reversals of language (“the science of domination becomes the domination of science” and so on) that really meant very little. He seemed to take an obnoxious, gleeful pleasure in his own wit and eloquence; I could just seem him, as he writes, muttering to himself, “God, I’m good.” Really, I found all his little language flourishes distracting and meaningless.<br /><br />His form was kind of interesting though. Like Twitter, only longer.<br /><br />I found Baudrillard much easier to read, although pessimistic. It was nice reading this piece at this point in the semester, because of how he tied in and analyzed other thinkers we have already read in this class. It was a good review, and a good insight into how these various thinkers dialogue with each other.<br /><br />The prompt:<br />[…] The big difference between the Frenchmen and McLuhan is that the former appear to be quite critical of these changes, whereas McLuhan was considerably more sanguine. What is it about the modern electronic media that so disturbs Debord and Baudrillard?<br /><br />Debord seems to be concerned with a society obsessed with appearances to the neglect of meaning or thought. The spectacle, he says, is comprised of “images detached from every aspect of life [merging] into a common stream” (12). These images lose “unity of life” and create a world where appearance is all: “te spectacle proclaims the predominance of appearances and asserts that all human life, which is to say all social life, is mere appearance” (14). The pervasiveness, disconnectedness, and appearance-centeredness of the electronic media, especially the modern manifestation of the electronic media, render it the sort of entity that could quite conceivably promote this “society of the spectacle” that Debord so detests. Take for example the television: it transmits to the viewer a series of disconnected images (commercials which break up programs, programs of different sources following each other, or showing simultaneously on different channels), which the viewer often enters into without context. Those programs depicting some aspect of human life give a generally unrealistic portrayal of true social interaction, instilling in the viewer a conception of human life based more upon these images than upon actual observation of actual humans. Moreover, as Baudrillard also points out, the viewer substitutes the viewing of these images for actual social interaction. Finally, the system of advertising, especially the advertising of commodities, by which television is funded fuels the “pseudo-needs” people create to sustain the economy and the reign of the commodity.<br /><br />Baudrillard seems less worried about the imagistic, spectacular society that may result from the electronic media, and more concerned with how these technologies may degrade true communication. It essential that communication be recriprocal. It is not enough, for instance, that all political parties have a news channel where they may air their respective opinions, because television is inherently a one-way medium, in which the viewer listens to what the broadcaster says, without being able to respond. No matter the content of the program, or how many different programs and different viewpoints the viewer chooses to view, the communication is still always one way. It is also not enough for Baudrillard that the transmitter and receiver reverse roles, because this only results in a one-way communication going the opposite direction. Any communication or media that is to be truly revolutionary must break down these barriers. He poses graffiti as one of these media, as it is inherently transgressive. <br /><br />I wonder what he would think of internet forums or the comment sections on blogs. Although they are not inherently transgressive media, they do allow for greater reciprocal communication, and they allow readers to give feedback directly to the author of a thought, video, etc. However, I think even such communal internet media still pose some of the problems Baudrillard identified with the electronic media. He says in regard to television, “ TV, by virtue of its mere presence, is a social control in itself … it is the certainty that people are no longer speaking to each other” (281). I think that same problem often proves true for the internet, even if many people mainly use the internet to “speak” to people. The problem with communications like e-mail, Facebook, and other social networks is that we are addressing ourselves to a cyber-persona of the person with whom we speak, in which such factors as body language, tone, and even oftentimes context are stripped away; we moreover present our own cyber-personas, consciously or not, to those with whom we speak. So by turning ourselves toward a screen and away from other flesh-and-blood humans, we engage in a type of social interaction that is built upon a great deal of illusion (hat tip to Debord). I think Baudrillard is quite prescient in his fear that the electronic media will stop people from actually talking to each other, whether it be because they are viewing various one-way media (TV, YouTube videos, internet articles, etc.) or they are only “speaking” with other people’s cyber-personas. It is not uncommon to hear statements like, “In an age where everything is so connected, why do we feel so isolated?” This degradation of human communication feared by Debord and Bauddrillard seems to have some foundation in reality.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-48737175455052822332011-02-15T19:56:00.001-07:002011-02-15T20:08:22.857-07:00Response: Barthes and FoucaultThis week I will be responding to Mythologies by Roland Barthes and “What is an Author” and Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault..<br /><br />This week’s prompt is the following: <br />“[…]So, in some sense, both Barthes and Foucault argue (Barthes rather more directly), we get our sense of self through media consumption. In what sense do you think that who you are--your desires, your fears, your most fundamental beliefs about yourself and the world--could plausibly be attributed to the signs and meanings that you consume through our consumption of modern media messages?”<br /><br />This semester I am taking a class about British Romanticism, so after a few weeks of studying the Romantics and their extreme emphasis on the individual, I was struck by the difference in this week’s readings concerning the individual. For Foucault and Barthes, the self seems to be the sum of the signifiers a person chooses to denote him-/herself, the signified, or, in Foucault’s case, the signifiers used to signify an author, whether the author chooses them or not. Barthes’s writing on semiotics may be applied to any medium we use to interact with the world and the people around us: the clothes we wear, the labels we give ourselves, that which we claim to like and to dislike. All these signifiers add up to create the mythology of self. This idea of self then becomes naturalized, and we perceive it as something that is (“That’s just how I function”) as opposed to something we construct. Foucault takes it a step further concerning authors, and how we retroactively construct their “selves.” In our conception of an author, it is the body of his or her published work to which we refer when we say his or her name. As Foucault points out, there are some pieces of information which learning will not alter our conception of that author, and some that vastly will—for instance, my conception of James Joyce was exceedingly altered when I learned of his erotic love letters to Nora Barnacle (the following comic quite appropriately expresses my reaction to said letters: http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=32). However, whatever my conception of James Joyce, it is a construction made from a variety of signifiers I have learned to associate with him. How many of t hose signifiers, though, would he actually have chosen? Probably, poor James would not have chosen to have his letters to Nora made public. For Foucault, then, the way one’s “self” is constructed is not even within one’s power to choose.<br /><br />The prompt seems to be asking for our personal opinions, so I will give mine. I hesitate to call myself a structuralist, having only minimal exposure to the theory, but it makes a lot of sense to me that the way we conceptualize the world is formed by the structure of the language we speak. I find that whenever I really learn a new word, in the sense that I fully absorb and understand its meaning, I’m able to think about things with a liberating sense of greater clarity (one of my most recent lexical discoveries was “apotheosis”). Although I (and, therefore, I extrapolate many others, even if said extrapolation is somewhat hubristic) don’t necessarily think in words, but rather in abstract ideas or emotions, I find that I cannot fully process these ideas until I put them into words. That’s why talking something out with someone when I am upset is helpful, because it forces me to crystallize my random feelings into words. Further, as I explained in my blog last week, I think it makes a lot of sense that a culture’s language, or, on a smaller scale, a person’s language, could have a profoundly formative effect on that culture’s expression and development. Thus, a person’s or a culture’s contact with media messages, which are made up of signifiers such as words, must greatly influence that person or culture’s self-identity, because it provides a framework on which to build said identity. However, that said, I think there are some elements to human “selfness” that cannot be reduced to contact with media messages—primarily biological elements like hormones or basic necessities. Although how we confront these biological elements may be largely a construction built on the framework given to us by our culture and its mythologies (for instance, how one thinks about and responds to the drive for sex), I do think there is a sub-language or sub-semiological level to these biological elements which, though it may be expressed through the filer of semiology, exists outside of a semiological construction of self.<br /><br />And now, for a bit of a tangent. This does not completely have to do with Foucault and Barthes, but I feel that it’s somewhat related. I took a class on the history of literary theory in the fall of 2009, and one of the first things we read about was the “The Intentional Fallacy,” by Wimsatt and Beardsley. This is an idea of New Criticism or Formalism that states that what the author intended to do with a text is irrelevant. We neither can know for sure what the author intended, nor does the author’s intent matter to the meaning of the text, even if the author has explicitly expressed his/her intent. Like Foucault’s idea of the author, the intentional fallacy divorces a text from any personal elements. I am unsure as to how much structuralism and formalism are related, but it seems to me that they at least share that impersonal element. What matters is the structure of the language or the structure of the text, not some sort of abstract idea of self and self-expression.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-74740531204563936602011-02-08T19:56:00.003-07:002011-02-08T20:01:11.412-07:00Response: McLuhanThis week I am responding to Understanding Media, the Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan, chapters 1-4, 9, and 31<br /><br />McLuhan starts out with the idea that media is an extension of self (7). Although he later elaborates on this idea with the Narcissus metaphor, he starts off without defending this idea, as though he felt it were a given. Although I found this to be somewhat annoying, the definition intuitively makes sense to me. McLuhan later goes onto define media as something that “eliminate[s] time and space factors in human association” (9). This makes sense in terms of what Wiener said about humans being the only animal “in whom this desire for communication, or rather this necessity for communication, is the guiding motive of their whole life” (Wiener 3). Communication may be understood as the process of making something known—some idea, concept, emotion, event, etc. Since no two humans have the exact same experience or perception of existence, any act of communication closes the gap, thereby “eliminat[ing] time and space” factors, between the experiences of sender and receiver. So by decreasing the gap between the experience, or self, of sender and receiver, the sender has extended his/herself such that it is closer to the self of the receiver. That got a little rambly, but to sum up what I was trying to say, an act of communication is an attempt to help another person—another self—better understand the self of the communicator, in terms of allowing the receiver to vicariously experience the thoughts, actions, or emotions of the sender. Therefore, the media through which a person him/herself known to another self is, necessarily, an extension of self.<br /><br />However, McLuhan broadens his definition of media to include things we wouldn’t normally consider to be acts of communication, like tools or cars or clothing (although, in the case of the latter, fashion could be considered the imposing of meaning onto clothing). A tool like a hammer becomes an extension of self in a corporeal rather than metaphysical sense. It extends the hand and magnifies the strength to accomplish a specific task. So while this type of media is not a communicative medium in a person-to-person sense, it is still a medium in that it acts as a channel through which a person interacts with his/her environment. Further, if we think of a “message” in terms of a signal sent to effect a certain end, as Shannon and Weaver defined it, the hammer can be considered to communicate a message between person (sender) and nail (receiver).<br /><br />Moving on …<br /><br />Being the language person that I am, I was fascinated by McLuhan’s discussion of how the development of the technology of the phonetic alphabet created the individualist culture of cultures that use such an alphabet. Although I think he is being perhaps a little too categorical in his treatment of the issue—all cultures seem to fit in one box or another for him, without leaving room for grey areas or middle-of-the-road cultures—and he uses very charged terms like “civilized” in a somewhat too nonchalant manner, I think his discussion of how a technology like a phonetic alphabet can revolutionize cultural structure is really interesting. I have always been interested in how the brain uses language to conceptualize the world. Language is both a great tool for making ourselves known to others, and a crutch, in that we begin to rely on it to the extent that it is difficult for us to conceptualize the world outside of the set of grammatical structures and vocabulary presented to us. That’s why, when I read 1984, I found Orwell’s dystopia so terrifying; an effective deconstruction of language such as the Department of Truth was attempting would truly deconstruct people’s ability to even think revolutionary thoughts, because they would have no words for such thoughts.<br /><br />That was a tangent. Anyway, if language can have such a formative effect on the mind, it makes sense that it should have a similar effect on a culture. The idea that a phonetic alphabet allows for a greater degree of individualization in a culture makes sense because it provides all speakers of the language with the ability to pronounce and look up any word they encounter, even a new one of which they do not know the meaning. Studying Chinese, if I come across a character I have never seen before, there is no way for me to look it up, unless I can input it into an electronic pinyin converter (pinyin being the transliteration alphabet developed for Chinese). I can’t even pronounce a new character without asking someone who knows what it is. So such a language would reinforce communal settings, in which a person must rely on others with superior knowledge to increase his/her own knowledge. With a phonetic alphabet, as long as one knows the phonetic rules of the language, one can easily pronounce a new word or look it up. As such, one can rely on other written media to increase one’s knowledge, and as long as one has access to said media, one does not need other people for this pursuit.<br /><br />A phonetic alphabet also a more individualist nature than a character-based language in the sense that each letter is itself, and only itself. It corresponds to a sound (or maybe two or three, depending on the phonetic rules of the language), and that is all. In Chinese, there are several basic characters, and then characters made by combining basic characters into more complex characters. So if one recognizes a component in a complex character, one can guess the meaning. This sharing of character components creates linguistic webs of association that mimic the tribal relations McLuhan writes about.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-61794867729960440062011-01-30T18:56:00.000-07:002011-01-30T18:57:25.496-07:00Response: Shannon, Weaver, and WienerThis week I am responding to “The Mathematical Theory of Communication” by Claude E Shannon and Warren Weaver and The Human Use of Human Beings, chapters 1 and 11, by Norbert Wiener.<br /><br />Again, beginning with a couple informal responses.<br /><br />I hate math. One of math’s favorite hobbies is to tear my brain in pieces and then stomp on them while laughing maliciously at the spurting brain juice. So I was a bit apprehensive about the Shannon and Weaver reading. But I actually found it quite interesting, and not as painful as I was afraid it would be. I was especially intrigued by the idea of “noise” as it applies to the transmission of information, and, more specifically, translation between languages. I am double majoring in English and Spanish, studying Mandarin Chinese, and planning to go onto grad school in translation studies. Languages fascinate me, as does the act of translating something said in one language into another. Noise, in this case, would be whatever discrepancies arise from structural, vocabulary, stylistic, or idiomatic differences between languages. As I believe Wiener pointed out, a translator has, broadly speaking, two options: a more direct, literal translation that maintains denotative ideas from the original language, but perhaps loses something of idiomatic meaning or style, or a broader, more liberal translation that may maintain the original tone, but that also, intentionally or unintentionally, inserts meanings and nuances that were not originally present. I would say that the job of the translator, looking at these two options (and the spectrum of choices in between), is to pick the option producing the least amount of noise.<br /><br />And now, the prompt:<br /><br />The Marxists we have previously read seemed concerned with the manipulation of information from a socio-political standpoint—how is information being manipulated for the political ends of the ruling class, and how can the revolutionary class counter it? Shannon, Weaver, and Wiener, seem more concerned with manipulation of information (manipulation as in “technical treatment of a given material with a particular goal in mind,” as Enzensberger defines it) from a pragmatic stance—how can we, whoever we may be, manipulate information most effectively, such that it may arrive at the receiver, be that human or machine, with the least amount of distortion occurring during the transmission process. Both articles seem concerned with the idea of information free from any sort of partisan bias. Their concern is the act of communication, especially the changes it will, should, or should not undergo in the face of the development of communicative technologies.<br /><br />Shannon and Weaver focus on establishing a framework for thinking about information in quantifiable terms. I think it’s significant that they emphasize “information must not be confused with meaning” (161). This idea shifts the focus from the semantic implications of that which is communicated to the data that is transmitted.<br /><br />With this framework in mind, Wiener’s writing may be understood to discuss how machines can be designed to transmit, receive, and respond to information, and therefore the role they should play in social communication. His idea of a “message” is similar to Shannon’s idea of a “signal”—a stimulus, be it verbal, visual, etc., transmitted from a transmitter to a receiver, with the end of communicating a meaning. Wiener’s concern is control, “the sending of messages which effectively change the behavior of the recipient” (8). If we put in in Shannon’s terms, control is the process of removing noise from a transmitted message: “a message can lose order spontaneously in the act of transmission, but cannot gain it” (7). In terms of machines, control becomes difficult because machines can only respond to a message in one of a predetermined set of responses. Thus, while Wiener seems enthusiastic about the potential usages of communication machines in society, he warns that it is important to determine their place. Placing machines in roles that belong to humans can be dangerous, because they cannot be appropriately controlled, but placing humans in a role that should belong to a machine, now that such machines exist, is degrading to the human.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-78333344210056623292011-01-23T19:47:00.000-07:002011-01-23T19:48:33.725-07:00Response: Enzensberger and HabermasAgain, I will begin with a few informal reactions.<br /><br />Habermas used several words which were rather similar, he was using them for distinct entities, and I was not quite sure of the specific definitions. What does he mean by realm, sphere, domain, and world. He seemed to used these terms to convey something different, but I couldn’t quite figure out the distinctions between them.<br /><br />I am also curious about the meaning and implications of the term “avant-garde,” which has now come up in Adorno and Horkeimer, Benjamin, and Habermas. I know the basic definition of the term, and I have a series of ideas and attitudes associated with it, but I am interested in the historical context of the term in relation to how they use it—what specific artists do they consider to be avant-garde, and why.<br /><br />I was intrigued by Enzensberger’s definition of “heritage” as “class-specific handing-on of nonmaterial capital” (106). Again, I basically understood the idea of heritage, but if I had been asked to define it, I would have had some trouble. This definition seems to fit the idea I had in my head, but it also offers more to ponder, like what exactly is entailed by “nonmaterial capital.” I haven’t drawn any conclusions concerning this definition, but it caught my attention, and I want to think on it more.<br /><br />This week’s prompt is the following: “Despite their Marxist orientation, both Enzensberger and Habermas are generally considered more optimistic about the emancipatory potential of modern culture. What is the reason for this optimism?”<br /><br />Habermas’s optimism seems to be largely historically based. He details the changes that have occurred in the platforms through which culture has been developed and the cultural trends that resulted. From the coffee houses and salons opened up opportunities for the layperson to discuss and opine about art, such that it was no longer only the elite who could do so. The institution of paid concerts, although it made music more of a commodity, allowed composers to compose what they wanted, not just whatever a patron demanded for an occasion. While Arendt would have feared the destructive consequences to the commoditization of music, Habermas identifies the ways in which this sort of commoditization actually may create space for greater creative expression on the part of the composer. By identifying the positive effects of changing cultural platforms throughout history, Habermas seems to fear future change less and seems more open for recognizing its artistic and cultural potential.<br /><br />Enzensberger’s optimism seems to stem from a pragmatic recognition of the steps necessary to achieve a more egalitarian mass electronic media. He presents a quite realistic, pragmatic attitude towards the question of new media and how it should be treated. Although he is a Marxist, he clearly recognizes some of the problematic attitudes of some of his fellow left-wing thinkers towards new media. According to Enzensberger, many left-wing activists and thinkers have a tendency to write off new media as one of “the Man’s” devices, and therefore of dubious social good. For Enzensberger, this sort of attitude is counterproductive and problematic in that it doesn’t consider the potential of new media, only previous usages of it by the bourgeois; to use a cliché, this attitude “throws the baby out with the bathwater.” These left-wing activists are so repulsed by the thought of “manipulation” by the new media that they fail to realize, as Enzensberger points out, “every us of the media presupposes manipulation … The question is therefore not whether the media are manipulated, but who manipulates them” (104). <br /><br />It is this pragmatic understanding of electronic media that forms the basis for Enzensberger’s optimism. With this level-headed attitude that refuses to sensationalize electronic media as a device of “the Man,” Enzensberger is able to identify what changes need to occur to the mass media to render it truly egalitarian: primarily, that it somehow to achieve a greater level of interaction and dialogue between author and audience and to deconstruct the barrier between them. I think this idea anticipates many of the developments that have occurred with internet media. Enzensberger presents radio as an example of a form of media with the potential to achieve more egalitarian communication: “Radio would be the most wonderful means of communication imaginable in public life, a huge linked system—that is to say, it would be such if it were capable not only of transmitting but of receiving, of allowing the listener not only to hear but to speak, and did not isolate him but brought him into contact” (98). This idea anticipates such developments as the live podcast, in which the hosts use a platform like UStream or BlogTV to record a radio show live, during which listeners may call in to contribute or converse about what is being said in a live chat box. Similar developments like YouTube, web forums, and blogs also allow for a greater level of interaction between author and audience.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-51623334777409453192011-01-18T20:19:00.001-07:002011-01-18T21:02:47.210-07:00Response: Walter Benjamin and Hannah ArendtFirst, I will start off with a few informal reactions.<br /><br />I found Benjamin easier to read than Adorno and Horkeimer, as far as the language goes. However, as Kerry McAuliffe remarked to me, and I agree with her, he seems to use some words in a very specific, defined sense, and I was not entirely sure I understood all the implications of his usages of these words. These terms include “progressive” as it refers to literary technique, “phantasmagoria,” and “fetish.” I hope we might be able to go over these terms some in class so I can get a better grasp on precisely what he meant.<br /><br /> I was also unclear on his position towards fascism. Perhaps my understanding of fascism is somewhat faulty, but I had thought of fascism and communism as opposites, and Benjamin seems to support some of the ideas of Marx. But at other times, he refers to “the privilege of fascism,” as though he were praising it.<br /><br />Now, on to the prompt.<br /><br />For Arendt, there seem to be two types of intellectuals in society. The function of the first is to take objects of culture and figure out how to adapt them to prevailing societal trends such that they are more universally palatable and consumable. She refers in one instance to this first group as a “special kind of intellectual” (284). The second , which she categorizes as being in a state of malaise, is the type that wishes to preserve objects of culture. This type exists in conflict with those “professionals” who “fabricate” books rather than write them (284). This double and apparently self-contradictory usage of the word “intellectual” may reflect some degree of the prevailing confusion between culture and entertainment about which Arendt writes.<br /><br />Benjamin uses the term “intellectual” in a rather more specific sense. He references Hiller’s definition of the intellectual as “representatives of a certain characterological type”, a type which transcends class, in that belonging to a specific class is not necessary for consideration as an intellectual (although, he does provide the caveat that members of the bourgeoisie have greater access to the means of production that help to facilitate becoming an intellectual” (84). The intellectual is defined by a shared set of “opinions, attitudes, or dispositions” (85). Benjamin states that, as an intellectual does not necessarily belong to one class or another, the position of the intellectual in society is determined “on the basis of is position in the process of production” (85). I understand “production” to refer to the act, craft, or process through which a work of art—in this case, literature—is created or written; in other words, it refers to the literary techniques used to convey an idea. Thus, it is not enough that a work merely promote revolutionary ideas; it must do so in a way that actively engages the process of production, using various techniques not merely from habit or tradition but because the author “has reflected deeply on the conditions of present-day production” (89). An intellectual only becomes part of the revolutionary class if he is also a producer in the sense that he engages these means of production, not merely regurgitates revolutionary rhetoric.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-40694075816160315692011-01-15T22:32:00.002-07:002011-01-15T22:42:51.068-07:00Honors 3013: The social construction of new mediaHello, all. [Insert requisite comment about how I am terrible at blogging]. I promise, I didn't drop off the face of the earth. I am just negligent when it comes to blogging/journalling/whatever. However, I will be putting this blog in use again. I am taking an Honors class this semester about, as the title implies, new media, the internet, the role it plays in our culture, how we interact with new media, etc. One of the requirements for this class is that we post weekly blog responses to our readings. I decided to use this blog for that purpose rather than creating a new one because 1.) I'd rather have just one blog account and 2.) these issues are topics I like to think about, so I may want to save these responses for future reference. For those of you who have been following me to hear about my travels, these posts might be of little interest, so I will certainly not be offended if you don't read them. <br /><br />I am excited about this class, because, like I said, I like to think about these topics, but I don't always feel that I am intellectually equipped to think well about them. I hope this class will give me said intellectual equipment to contemplate these ideas more thoroughly.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4121498449006031918.post-1805358507287342682010-03-26T01:20:00.002-06:002010-03-26T01:24:19.102-06:00Spring Break AdventureSorry I have been neglectful of writing recently. Life and homework and tutoring kind of took over. I've got some entries in the works, but I haven't had time to get them ready and post them.<br /><br />Anyway, I just wanted to let you all know that for the next week, I will be folicing around Europe with Kerry. We have just spent our first night of our adventure in Brussels. Today we will frolic around Brussels, and tonight we head to Luxembourg City. Then tomorrow night we head to Paris, where we will spend four days. I am super excited to get to see all these places. I don't know how much time or how much internet I will have while I am here, but I will try to at least journal, so that I can copy some of my first impressions up here when I get back.<br /><br />Have a lovely day!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0